


Spiderweb Cracks

by UnidentifiedPie



Category: Gintama
Genre: Angst, Friendship, Gen, Joui War, Pain, but not, how they break, you'll understand I'm sure
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-02
Updated: 2016-07-02
Packaged: 2018-07-19 15:39:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7367524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UnidentifiedPie/pseuds/UnidentifiedPie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Katsura is just their friend - until he's not.</p>
<p>(This is how it falls apart.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Spiderweb Cracks

This is how it falls apart: 

Gintoki kills Shouyou and Takasugi loses an eye and they’re all shaking and bloody and so damn tired of death and blood. They’re all guilty, all hurting, all lost - they’re seventeen, nearly eighteen but still _children_ , and they’re so tired, so sick of watching people die again and again and _again_ , how much does the world want to _take_? Loss and pain are eating them alive and there’s this - Gintoki killed their teacher and Takasugi and Katsura were too weak to stop it and they’re all _aching_ , all shaky-sick and aching and sad, all blaming each other and blaming themselves. Anger eats though their veins, made cold and sickened by sorrow, and it feels like they’re listing to one side, falling over and crashing apart and they were best friends they were brothers they hurt each other they weren’t good enough- 

They’re stupid. They’re seventeen, they’re children, they’re young and lost and sickened and shaking and bloody and they’ve lost track of their body count by now, and that’s not a thing seventeen-year-olds should have done. And Gintoki is blank-eyed and shutting everyone out, brushing them away, stiff and tense and drawn taut like a string about to snap, Takasugi is cold and smiling like he wants to cry and his eyes - both of them, one stabbed out and bloody and raw, the other burning with a horrible, dying mix of pain-loss-anger-guilt - are awful awful things, and Katsura- 

Katsura _hurts_. 

So this is how it falls apart: Gintoki isn’t taking care of himself because he’s a damned idiot - he hasn’t eaten or slept for days, as if no one can see how thin he’s getting, the bags beneath his empty, dead, blocking-out-the-world eyes, and Katsura tries to demand that he rests. 

“I’m fine,” Gintoki says, already turning away, already blocking Katsura out.

“You’re going to die,” Katsura says, expression fixed into a blank, hard mask because without it he will cry. He can’t lose someone else again; he will shatter, he will break, he cannot breathe. “What happens then?” 

“Then I’ll be dead,” Gintoki says, like it doesn’t matter. Katsura feels something hot and cold rise up in his lungs like tears, he aches, he hurts, chest gone tight and painful because it matters, it _matters_ , it hurts and aches and he cannot _breathe_. 

“ _Gintoki_ ,“ Katsura says, and his voice doesn’t break only because he won’t let it, swallows the jagged edges so that they sit painfully somewhere between his lungs. A plea sticks in his throat like blood-soaked fabric plastered against the inside of his windpipe. 

_Please._

There is a hole in his stomach and blood in his lungs and the ground is giving way beneath his feet. He tries to reach out, but his hand is lead-heavy, weighing more than his sword, and it falls through the air. He is too tired to lift it back up.

Gintoki turns around. His eyes are dead and unreadable and his expression is blank, and Katsura feels a knife driving through his stomach, piercing and collapsing lungs.

This is Gintoki, this is the _Shiroyasha_ \- strong, unbreakable, the soldier who never died, the thin scarred boy who never cried. Gintoki, who watched friends die with nothing but dead eyes in a blank face, with pain only revealed in the rare, quiet breaking of a rough voice and shaking, bloody hands. 

And that was a mistake, because he can break, he can _shatter_ , and now his hands are bloody, not even shaking, hanging limp and empty by his sides like broken wings. The boy who never cried, the warrior who never died- the friend who never left is staring at Katsura now, and his expression is tired, worn, broken, like he’s hanging by a fraying thread. 

More than anything, more than Shouyou’s head on the ground or the blood running down Takasugi’s cheek, it is this tired, broken expression that reminds Katsura of his father, his mother, his grandmother - the shattered smiles they gave him before they died, warm hands pressing against his tear-damp cheeks, the way their eyes looked so damn sad. 

And Katsura feels his heart break again. 

(Don’t leave me. Don’t leave us, please.) 

Katsura would always have rather died than lose his friends, would rather stop breathing than lose anything more, but he wasn’t given that option. Gintoki was, and Gintoki was selfish and selfless and everything is a sick twisted mess and Katsura can’t _breathe_. (Gintoki would have rather died than lose them, but was that an option he was given? Was that an option anyone was given?) 

And Gintoki looks so tired and sad - worn thin and taut, broken down to the bare minimum. There’s nothing left but empty pain and loss and Katsura can’t take it, he can’t watch them hurt, he hates this he hates it he hates _himself_ (why were we so stupid? Why were we so weak? Why did Gintoki choose us, that stupid _stupid_ -) 

“Zura,” Gintoki says, voice broken hoarse and rough. 

“It’s not Zura, it’s Katsura,” Katsura says evenly, because he doesn’t want the words to come out pleading, because he doesn’t want his voice to fracture and break. An automatic response, the way a child reaches out for reassurance. _I’m your friend, right? You’ll fight to stay my general, fight to call me friend? (Fight to call me Zura, because I’m not Katsura, I’m not a general when I’m with you._ )

(Stuck in his chest, his throat, his bleeding, shattered heart is a desperate, desperate breaking cry: 

please fight. please fight to call me a friend, even when i don’t deserve it. i’m _tired_ of losing things.) 

Gintoki stares at him for a long, long moment (and there is dirt and blood on his face and he looks tired, broken, worn). “Aa,” he says, not soft but low, resigned (he sounds like his heart is breaking). “General Katsura.” 

There is suddenly rock ice where Katsura’s heart and lungs should be and he can’t breathe, can’t move, everything is frozen in stone and no no _no_ this isn’t what he _wants_ \- 

He is cracking, fracturing beneath the weight of that name.

(You messed up. You messed up, like you always do. Your parents left you your grandma left you Shouyou left you. If you wanted Gintoki to stay you should have fought for him, not asked him to fight for you, can’t you see that he’s tired?) 

But Katsura is tired, too. So, so _tired_ , he can barely breathe, barely see. He’s tired of fighting for people who always leave, he wants someone to fight to keep him, and it’s the wrong time but he has never needed it this badly, the reassurance that even if he lets go someone will hold him up (that someone will stay). 

His tongue slipped and his mind slipped and the desperate ask for reassurance fell before he considered the external factors, before he contemplated plans and reactions; shame on him, he slipped up, cost him his friends the way his poor planning cost them their teacher. And he hurt Gintoki, he hurt the boy he called friend - Gintoki, who killed Shouyou because Katsura was weak, who had to murder their father to fix Katsura’s stupid, stupid mistakes. 

Katsura just told that boy: I’m a general, don’t call me a friend.

Gintoki, who looks like he’s _dying_ ; and Katsura is just _brilliant_ , such a damned _genius_ , isn’t he? Killing the unkillable soldier, making the tearless boy cry. 

Katsura is so stupid. He is so damn stupid, he’s messed up, he can’t breathe. 

This is why generals should not also be friends. It hurts too much, there is too much emotional investment for decisions to be made with a clear mind. He has been doing things wrong the whole war, is there any wonder why they’ve lost?

“Gintoki,” Katsura tries, and everything tangles in his throat - please be okay, please don’t be hurt, please stay my friend. Please forgive me. I didn’t mean it.

Shit, I didn’t _mean_ it. Not like that. 

(Please stop looking like that.)

“We should split up,” Gintoki says tiredly, eyes still fixed on Katsura’s face, still empty, still broken, still looking like the people Katsura watched die (and Katsura wants to take them back, those words, all the times he said ‘it’s not Zura, it’s Katsura’ - he just wants to be a _friend_ ). “There’s no point in this, Z- Katsura. I don’t want to keep fighting.” 

Katsura breaks. 

It’s a quiet, aching break, someone taking a porcelain statue and applying pressure to both ends, increasing the force bit by bit until it snaps apart, right in half, the covering over the hollow bits crumbling in with the weight, raining fragments and dust. (But Katsura is completely hollow, and the entirety of him crumbles in.) 

He presses his eyes shut and doesn’t collapse, because the pressure has been there for years and he knows how to keep standing through terrible dying pain, but heat rises behind his eyes and a scream sticks in his throat and he wants to _cry_. 

(Please, please, please, don’t leave.) 

But he knows how much Gintoki has given up for him, for them. Everything _hurts so much_ and he just wants this nightmare to end, but he knows what Gintoki has sacrificed for them - the blood on Gintoki’s shaking hands and the death on Gintoki’s thin shoulders - and Gintoki hasn’t asked anything from them, has given and given and given and all he wanted them to do was _watch his back_. 

And Katsura? Katsura broke his end of the deal. His plan failed and Gintoki and Takasugi hurt and Shouyou died; and yeah, Katsura watched Gintoki’s back alright, did a damn good job of watching as the Tendoushuu demanded that Gintoki choose, as Gintoki stepped forward and blood flew and Gintoki murdered the only parent he ever had, killed their teacher with his own shaking hands. 

Katsura feels sick, feels cold, feels hurt-lost-empty and everything is messed up, everything is _wrong_. (And if they stay they’ll just break each others’ hearts again. This is all Gintoki has ever asked. This is the hardest thing anyone has ever asked.) 

(But he isn’t good enough to keep his friends, is he? He just keeps hurting them, and he can’t keep watching them die.)

He can’t keep watching Gintoki and Takasugi die. The general has to live, his grandmother once said, but this general would die for his two friends, both of them or either of them. He would rather stop breathing than watch their broken hearts stop. 

“Alright,” Katsura hears himself echoing distantly, lost, broken, hurting. There is stone and ice where his lungs should be, filling with blood and leaving him helpless. 

Gintoki dips his head in a nod. 

And that’s it. It’s over. 

(they’re gone)

**Author's Note:**

> hahaha. um. 
> 
> Kudos and comments are very very highly valued and appreciated? They would make me dance around the house, so that's cool. Tell me if I managed to make you cry.


End file.
